#CoffeeWithHR: How Parinitha and Debdutta of GreedyGame Hire for Cultural Fit and Adaptability

GreedyGame is a native ad platform, that engages users with blended content inside the app. It uses the in-app objects as ad flyers and banners to provide an immersive experience with minimum distraction.

And by the looks of it, the GreedyGame team reserves the same importance for their recruitment efforts. GreedyGame leadership knows hiring good talent is as important as a breakthrough product idea.

In fact, their brilliant HR team believes hiring A-players hinges more on than just providing fat salary offers. That’s why hiring team at GreedyGame tailors the elements to provide the best candidate experience to each individual. And this approach helps them recruit star employees and avoid mediocre talent.

But every company, large or small, wants that right? So, how does GreedyGame ends up hiring the most creative and dedicated of the lot? And more importantly, how does it hang onto these overachievers?

Good thing you won’t have to struggle with these questions. As part of our monthly series #CoffeeWithHR, we had a chat with Debdutta Pal, HR specialist and Parinitha Ramprasad, HR manager at GreedyGame. Let’s hear the answers from them.

Can you define yourself or your work in one sentence?

Parinitha: Well, I’ve always felt HR is a completely universal department and since I’m a people’s person, it made natural sense to me to choose HR as a career.

What does a typical day at work look like for you?

Parinitha: Well, in the first half of my workday, I’m usually scanning through all the tasks. Most of my daily tasks involve sourcing, reaching out to candidates, revisiting company policies, and searching for ways to improve it.

Based on that, I make my to-do lists and then dive into a current read about the recent happenings in HR space. It’s a new habit that I picked up. It helps me learn or implement new practices being followed in the world – not just India.

In the second half, I simply pick up the tasks on my to-do list and finish them one by one. Since I prioritise tasks when I’m making the list, I can handle my whole day’s work pretty easily. So, that’s my typical day.

Great, you seem to be doing a lot of work in that profile. So, what are the challenges you face in your role?

Debdutta: So, if you compare the job opportunities of a startup and a larger company, as a big company you have perks and job security. Whereas in a startup you have the opportunity to have an exponential growth in a long period of time.

As a result, we have to look for candidates who are seeking challenging roles but with high rewards. So getting the wrong profiles or mistakenly targeting the wrong kind of candidates is a waste of time for both of us.

Alright, how do you conduct team building and employee engagement activities at GreedyGame?

Parinitha: We conduct a plenty of activities to keep the employees engaged. One thing we have is called Saturday Social. Another is Townhall, where all employees gather on the last Saturday of every month for a Q & A session. During Townhall, teams ask other teams questions to get an idea of what’s currently happening on that team.

And then we have sports activities as well. We’ve also enjoyed go-karting, and had a resort day for the whole team. In a way, we rarely have to encourage people to conduct or participate. You can guess the bond between the teams by this instance when we recently shifted the office, and every employee helped with it – not just the movers and packers.

There’s also a team-wide budget allocated to each team, and it’s up to the team if they want to exploit the budget on a monthly basis, or collect the amount and have a team outing such as a one night stay somewhere.

Other than that we also have office parties. Recently, we achieved a certain goal in our timeline and that’s something that we like to celebrate so that everybody is appreciated for the kind of work they’ve done.

Great team! So, what do you look for in a candidate?

Parinitha: Our main focus is on finding the right candidate for the right job. That also means looking for folks that can fit into our culture and the kind of work we do here. So, we look for someone who’s excited about the startup culture because it’s a whole another experience, being totally different from working in a corporate.

We also look for someone who’s ambitious, someone who wants to take it to the next level. These qualities are important because we experiment all the time to see what works and what doesn’t. And by focusing on those qualities, we make sure if candidate can experiment with new ideas and also own the outcome, whatever it may be. Lastly, we like our employees to focus on personal development as well, so we look for that in our candidates as well.

Alright. Is there any tool you can’t live without or a tool that makes your life easier while recruiting?

Parinitha: There’ a list of tools for a recruiter. First, I use Linkedin to find and build my network. Another one we use over here to make sure that we have a to-do list, are able to share our list, and assign tasks to each other is wunderlist. Then, Google calendar is also a tool we use daily.

Personally, I’ve gotten addicted to inshorts that keeps me in the loop with what’s happening in the world.

Final question, How do you unwind yourself?

Parinitha: After going home, I usually engross myself into TV shows, I’m a TV show addict. I also watch movies with my husband on some days. On other days we go out to a nice dinner together. Usually, I unwind by spending time with friends and family.